Category: ultraphotographic

Busy Bee

Progress on my dissertation has been an uphill battle against two very demanding design projects I’ve been plowing through at the same time. One, thankfully, is on its way to turning out very well after a few hiccups on press preceded by lots and lots and lots of passionate input from the authors/clients. It’s been a lot of work, but the end result is very exciting for us all. (I hope. Oh god, I hope we’re all equally excited at this point.)

The MATD Group Specimen is underway

The other is a horrorshow of trying to polish a turd for a client who doesn’t quite know what they want, can’t quite agree about what they’re trying to do, wouldn’t give me any time to help them figure it out, and has reduced the budget to just about a bag of peanuts and a glass of tap water. But I care, so I can’t just let myself blow them off.

Meanwhile, there’s still a ways to go on my acutely insightful analysis of typefaces for mathematics that I need to finish so I can graduate.

Introducing Gina

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Another deadline finished! We turned in our typeface files last week, and I just turned in the specimen booklet this morning. Next it’s an essay on the development and production of the typefaces, and after that it’s on to my research dissertation. Needless to say, there’s no Summer vacation for me this year.

Even with the other deadlines looming, it’s an incredible feeling to have finally “finished” the typeface. (I use the quotes because there are still problems to address, and I’ll probably spend a lot more time fleshing out a real family of fonts instead of the two I have now.) This was an entirely new undertaking for me, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I look forward to getting better as time goes by, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done so far, and pretty grateful to everyone who helped it come together.

Before I spend the next week or so writing about the typefaces themselves, I’d really like to take a moment to say something about their namesake — my old friend/boss/mentor/inspiration Gina Brandt-Fall.

gina_sparky.jpgGina was an extraordinary woman who passed away in April 2001. Although she had been having an ugly, all-out battle with breast cancer for the previous two years, and knew her days were running out, I don’t think she was prepared for the sudden liver failure that claimed her in the end. I know I wasn’t. Gina, who I worked with for years, moved to California a few months prior, planning to start a new life in the wake of the cancer that she fought so aggressively. Her doctors discovered more cancer, though, burrowed further into her chest and lungs where they couldn’t get to it without major surgery that would have left Gina in excruciating pain for her last months. She opted for more chemotherapy instead, so she could have a few good weeks out of each of those last months — time to enjoy the sun, to be with her friends, to be able to pull together the fragments of the wonderful book she had been working on for so long. Even during her illness, Gina was incredibly vibrant, emotionally and intellectually engaged, empathic, thoughtful, insightful. Gone, just like that.

Gina and I took to one another immediately went I first interviewed with her for some freelance typesetting work in about 1996 or so. From the very first day, I was taken by her enthusiasm, humor, and quick mind as our conversation went from typesetting to typography to books to literature to life, and that spark never faded during all the years we worked side-by-side. I learned an incredible amount of new things from her, and I was actively encouraged by her to take those new ideas to new levels, and to always leave myself the energy to do what I love. And I laughed with her. Oh my, how we laughed when we were together! Even when we started out bitching and moaning about the workplace and the larger world, we were able to put things in perspective and mix joy in with the righteous indignation. She was not only a friend and a colleague and a teacher, but also an inspiration. That’s cliché, I know, but true: I aspire to her level of passionate interest in life.

Once I knew I was going to set aside life as I knew it to follow a dream, it seemed like the perfect tribute to Gina to dedicate a part of that dream to her. Not only was she the one who made me learn how to typeset math (or rather, she was the one who made me realize how fascinating it could be, and who encouraged me to keep learning as much as I could), but she was the one who showed me that it’s good to hang onto your dreams and jump at them when you have the chance.

My Time of Night

Unlike Sky Masterson, I’m not much of a night owl. I am a big fan of cities, though, and my favorite time to see a city is the middle of the night. I like the play of shadow and artificial light. I like seeing what spaces designed for lots of people look like when they’re empty. I like the stillness. When you know a city’s rhythms during the day, it’s almost magical to see it at night. Sometimes it’s not a good magic necessarily — sometimes it’s like an evil curse of drunkards and litter — but it’s usually quite lovely.

Through a wacky series of logistical mishaps, I went into London last night but my plans for lodging fell through and I found myself having to kill time until the morning train. (Of course, the joke was on me when I discovered that there are trains running all through the night.) I decided to take a late-night walking tour and look for interesting pictures to take and get a feeling for London’s other side.

Desolate StreetEven during the day London’s curious, crazy-quilt layout of tiny streets, back alleys, mews, and side passages leads to a lot of serendipitous discoveries, and they’re even more curious at night. Granted, I avoided the darker alleys and passageways, a little too haunted by visions of Dickensian ruffians in every shadow, but there was still plenty to see. For one thing, the main drags of Soho and the West End are filled with even more stumbling drunks than I’ve ever seen at the same hour in New York. And they all want curry or pasties! Since they mostly seem to stick close to places to get food, taxis, or night buses, though, the streets would be completely empty as soon I turned a corner. Places like Carnaby Street whose shops are thronged during the day were completely desolate. Empty little passages that just look grey during the day glisten a little under the lights at night. It’s lovely.

Caranby Street

Christmas Stories

Now that my Christmas-killing cold has settled down into a manageable case of congestion, I’m lucid enough to string a few sentences together without needing a nap to recover.

I was waiting for a touch of cold to hit me. I’d gotten through two changes of season without one, so I was convinced I was in for a whopper. Apparently the climate here suits me. Either that or my seasonal colds really have been psychosomatic all along, and there was no need for one since I’ve been supremely happy ever since I got to the UK.

Captain JackI celebrated the end of term with a brief weekend visit to Bristol to see the good Drs. Paul and Tony, who whisked me off for an afternoon tour of Cardiff to take advantage of the inexplicable burst of sunny weather I’d brought with me. Since I had never seen any episodes of the new Doctor Who series (and I only ever saw a few minutes of the older shows, usually while I waited for Blake’s 7 to be broadcast late at night on public television) or its spin-off, Torchwood, I couldn’t fully appreciate the thrill of being in locations featured prominently on screen, but I at least did my nerdly duty and took pictures:

Torchwood Tower

The gents kindly indoctrinated me into the ways of the Doctor, Captain Jack, and their cronies later that night, so now I have a new avenue for exploring my not-so-inner geek. It figures the Doctor Who franchise would finally grab me once they figured out that cute leading men might be a good idea. If only I had a television.

The end of the term didn’t actually mean the end of work, so it was back for a few more days of productivity after my trip. Hilariously, it seems we’re supposed to have a direction for our typeface designs “locked down” by the time the next term starts in January, and I know I’m not the only one in the group who stills feels a total lack of confidence about being that far along. I guess I’ll have to think about that, too, in between bursts of work on the huge essay I have due the week after classes resume. (Bear in mind, though, that I am totally digging all this type geekery in which I have become so immersed.)

The flatmates and I threw a lovely shindig so we could celebrate the season with our classmates before everyone scattered for Christmas. (I can safely say “Christmas” because we were all raised with that flavor of midwinter gift-giving holiday.) That party set in motion a lovely string of coincidences that led to me hanging out in London a few nights later with some Brazilian and some Belgian pals at a phenomenal Brand New Heavies reunion show.

The Brand New Heavies

I have been waiting for over a decade for a chance to see these folks play, and I was relieved that this wasn’t just some half-assed walk through their back catalogue. They were on fucking fire as they funked their way through old singles, gems off their new album, and even an amazing cover of Seven Nation Army. I have never seen a band coax so many white people into dancing so much. When I went back to crash at my friend Tim’s place afterward, he chided me for never mentioning my love of the Heavies when I visited him back in their heyday, because at the time he probably could have arranged for me to meet their drummer via a mutual friend. Sigh.

I was hoping for some quiet down-time in London for the next couple of days, but I wound up walking for hours and hours again, getting to know a bit more of the city. I finally have the bearings to get from certain key locations to others without a map, or without worrying about following a particular route. I also developed magnificent, firm legs and slightly sore arches from all this exploring. The robust condition of my legs was offset by the achey back I developed from sleeping on Tim’s teeny couch for three nights in a row, but in a city that’s even more expensive than New York I was happy to have any lodgings I could afford.

I finally dipped my toe into London’s gay nightlife, as well, tagging along with my pal Jonathan, who can’t go ten feet without running into someone he knows. We spent most of the evening at a pub called the King’s Arms where I felt really young and slim, but yet still invisible since neither of those things count for much in a roomful of bears. Since I don’t really like drinking, smoking, bears, or crowded rooms it was kind of a long night, despite some very enjoyable company. By the time I left I could feel my cold coming on, so the die was cast for Christmas to cast its usual cloud over my spirits.

After a long, long morning of last-minute errands in London and lots of public transportation filled with lots of holiday travelers, I wanted to crawl under a rock with a bottle of cough syrup and a pillow. I was pretty miserable by the time I got back to Reading, so I was double-extra-happy to discover a long-awaited package from Dave that was filled with three months of comic books. Plus the Super Pets!:

Streaky and Krypto

Streaky is the only cat I can love. I mean that.

Leave it to my bestest pal to find a way to provide me with exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it most. He’s spooky like that. As I was passing out from exhaustion and illness, at least I knew I would have Krypto and Yorick to keep me company if and when I woke up.

Holiday Festivities

Fear not, true believers, I’m still here and still kicking. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks at school doing workshops in greek and Indic scripts, which involved an awful lot of work with a few impromptu social events throw in for mental health.

MATD Thanksgiving

At the last minute, the American posse here decided we didn’t want to let Thanksgiving go uncelebrated, so my flatmates and I donated our generously proportioned lounge so we could invite our classmates over for a some Indian take-out. (Because Thanksgiving is all about Americans and Indians coming together, right?) Even though it’s the one holiday I get really sentimental about, I’d mostly forgotten about Thanksgiving, and in the end I was glad we were able to celebrate it properly. By properly, of course, I mean that it wasn’t about the food so much as about family, and this year my family is effectively the ragtag group foreigners I spend every day with now.

I was beginning to note that Advent seems to be a much bigger feature of the Christmas season here in the U.K., and then it suddenly dawned on me that they need Advent more than we do in the States since they don’t have the day after Thanksgiving to open up the season for them.

I’m also thankful for the generosity of an old pal, who’s taking me out this Friday to kick off the Christmas season in the best way possible. (Here’s a hint!)

I won’t be going home for Christmas this year. Or rather, I won’t be heading back to visit on relatives or friends, since I technically have no home of my own to which I can return. We’re expected to keep working through most of the month-long Christmas break, so I decided that it would be too stressful and exhausting to fly to the States for a few days of madness and sentiment, only to race back and hit the books. I’m sure I’ll have a lovely Generic Midwinter Holiday with the other expats, and best of all I’ll have a few days to just sleep and slack off.

Pink Slips

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One of my final farewells will be at this month’s WYSIWYG Talent Show next Wednesday night at the Bowery Poetry Club. (Yes, they’ve moved to Wednesday nights — make a note!) This month the blog kids will be talking about getting shitcanned at “Pink Slips: You’re Fired!” I’m performing at this one, too, so it really will be my last hurrah as I take the stage with Liam McEneany, Jon Friedman, Peter Hyman, Stolie the Funky Brown Chick, Chris Alonzo, and my fellow former Trusty Sidekick Drub. We will rock you.

Stranger in Stranger

Well, looky-looky at the cover of this week’s issue of The Stranger:

Cover of The Stranger

The photo, taken by a pseudo-pornographer I know, is in honor of Hump! 2, The Stranger‘s 2nd annual amateur porn contest. I’m sure that boy-toy model Jeffy up there would be first in line to submit something to the festival if he could. He’s got that wild exhibitionist streak in him. Can’t you tell?

Prom Trauma!

WYSIWYG: Prom Trauma

We’ve been kinda pokey about getting out all the details (let’s just say your favorite all-blogger reading series is run by people whose lives are generally busy and stressful), but next Tuesday night is the long-anticipated Prom Trauma edition of the WYSIWYG Talent Show. Shame! Nostalgia! Hilarity! Fashion! All this can be yours for 7 lousy bucks, this upcoming Tuesday, May 23, at the Bowery Poetry Club (doors at 7:30, show at 8:00).

With performances by:

Come! Wear a corsage! Find out if any of us put out after the dance!

(P.S.: That’s me in the picture up there, obviously. I’ll share my one prom story next week.)